(The angel had been right. It may have been as early as yesterday when he’d decided that he wouldn’t change a thing should a gust of time blow him back into this house. Earlier, he’d wanted to tell Gamble that kismet had nothing to worry about, as he had no intentions of changing so much as a light bulb this evening.
Just remain a bystander.
Damn. It was so fiercely tempting not to, knowing the shitstorm that was coming.
How many times had he been back?
As many lessons as deemed necessary…
He didn’t exactly know what she’d meant by that, but he figured it was safe to assume that, throwing physics and the Dewey decimal system to the wind, the purpose of his existence might be hinged upon nothing less than the perpetual re-enactment of this night; to experience every conceivable outcome until the desired sequence of events had been achieved. And when that was finally done, then what? Would the continuity machine start back up with a hiss-bang? Would destiny’s father pass out cigars?
But he was getting ahead of himself, was speculating about matters upon which he had neither rank nor aptitude. Nevertheless, the possibility that his existence might be nothing more than a phonograph needle caught in an interminable groove was as disturbing as it was antiquated.
No, he would just remain a bystander. Just...
Go with the flow.)
Duncan came out of the kitchen. “Freeze!” he ordered the lady.
She didn’t freeze. Hell, she didn’t even congeal, but kept right on coming with her squalling brat. Barefoot, and wearing only a white terrycloth robe that could have been pulled twice around her sallow figure, she staggered like a skid row lush as she entered the living room from the hallway. She was monstrously stoned on heroin.
Duncan saw the weapon. It was in the lady’s right hand (the one supporting the infant), most of it concealed by the child’s blue swaddling blanket. But enough prevailed that he could determine it was a single action .357.
Time was slowing, and the room’s acoustics had become those of an empty auditorium.
“Christ, lady, drop the gun, or I swear I’ll put you down!” Tyler promised, puberty revisiting his vocal chords. He was in a rigid stance, knees slightly bent, feet spread apart, both hands clutching his gun.
If his partner were to fire a shot now, Duncan thought, he would shatter from the repercussion like a cheap vase.
As if someone had flipped a switch, the baby stopped bawling, and as a bead of sweat left its salty signature on his lips, Duncan realized why. The lady had pulled back the lapel of her robe, allowing the infant to suckle her right breast.
The three people at the table remained seated; however, with each wobbly step the lady took, desperation broadened her husband’s eyes.
Duncan, without looking back, said to the Hispanic man, “Easy, asshole. If you so much as blink, I’ll drop her and the brat both.”
Duncan was sure he could hear the man’s ears begin to whistle, the rage starting to vent like steam through a kettle. But then, within the eerie silence, even a mute spider spinning a web under ten feet of water could make an obnoxious racket.
As the woman swiveled the gun beneath her baby’s back, aiming for Tyler, a depraved grin formed along her mouth. The blued barrel had a sheen as liquid as her eyes, the light from the ceiling fixture gliding along its surface like the bubble of a carpenter’s tool, squaring her intent.
Duncan saw something in his partner’s eyes then; something imperiling. “No, Tyler!” he commanded. “Don’t shoot!”
Ever so slightly, Tyler lowered his gun.
Slowing still, time began to seize. He had experienced decelerating time once before, in another life-or-death situation, and he knew that it was during these terrifying seconds when people claimed to have seen their life flash before their eyes. Duncan had been spared the replay then, and—what he hoped was a good omen—that biographical footage had yet to make the projection booth this time around.
A puff of smoke erupted beneath the infant, followed not quite instantaneously by a sluggish peal of thunder.
Within this drowsy sequence of time, Duncan thought to start running toward his partner, as if he could beat the shot and push him out of harm’s way. They were both wearing Kevlar vests, but those didn’t protect the head or groin, and there was no guarantee that they would save your life when struck by a bullet, the body absorbing the shock of the impact, which could kill you just as dead depending on the caliber of slug. Unlike in the movies, people wearing Kevlar weren’t likely to get right back on their feet and brush themselves off after colliding with a .357 magnum round. When they did, they were the exception, not the rule.
(Desperate now, the older Duncan thought to do something, anything, to disrupt the old course of events; to throw a log in the stream and maybe misdirect the flow. But, incongruous to their quasi-lethargic succession, the events were unfolding too fast for his mind to outmaneuver them.)
The bullet spun Tyler around, his gun sailing away from his hand.
(It had nicked his aorta, the older Duncan remembered. Bullet-proof vests weren’t very effective against Teflon-coated rounds either, otherwise known as armor-piercing, able to go through Kevlar and engine blocks the way wind goes through chicken wire.)
The baby screamed.
Grimacing, Tyler dropped to his knees and yelled, “Shoot the bitch! What the fuck are you waiting for? Shoot! Shoot!”
The lady just kept coming, staggering like some relentless, lactating mummy avenging a Pharaoh’s curse.
Duncan shuffled over to where his partner now lay, and just as he raised his gun and put the lady’s head between the sights, Tyler grabbed his ankle with a bloody hand. “Fuck you very much,” he gurgled. “I hope she’s worth it.”
“Just hang on, buddy,” Duncan ordered. “Just hang on.”
The woman stopped. He didn’t feel there was a clear, confident shot, not at their distance, not with an infant in the way. And he wasn’t about to turn this mess into outright calamity by murdering a child.
He lowered his gun, backing toward the door.
Another thunderclap.
The bullet entered his chest and exited just below his left scapula.
(According to the forensics report, the older Duncan recalled, it passed through the wall, punched through the metal stanchion of a street light fifty-five yards away, and finally through the bay window of one elderly couple, Mr. and Mrs. Adam Bainbridge. It came to rest within the cranium of Sir Alec Guinness Bainbridge, “Whiskers” for short, who had been grooming himself atop the backrest of the living room sofa, 1.7 football fields distant from the point of origin.
If Tyler Everton had not suffered any fatal wounds, and had subsequently learned that a cat had perished during the ordeal, he would have died nonetheless, as his heart would have surely exploded upon such rapturous news. Duncan had never in his life met anyone who detested cats as much—
Something occurred to him just then; something Dead Man had said after running over the tabby .
One down, ten billion more to go…
No way, he thought. Couldn’t be.)
Breathing was becoming arduous, and his vision was ebbing and flowing like a siren, which he was expecting to hear any minute. Lots of them. He had to get out of the house fast.
Two more shots sailed wide right, through the door.
Assuming the gun had its full complement of six rounds, that meant that she had two shots left.
He grabbed for the doorknob.
*****
Suddenly, the room was full of people.
His legs were folded under him now as he sat slumped against the wall, just beside the door. His breaths were coming quick and shallow, and his chest throbbed with an ache that seemed to go miles deep.
A voice whispered in his ear: “You’re going to be okay, Duncan.”
The voice belonged to a heavyset woman. Late forties, he guessed. Through his blurred vision, he gazed at her pretty face.
&nbs
p; Even though there were people all around him now—fifteen, maybe twenty—the commotion was knitted with…
Stillness.
His legs were ice cold.
Then he saw Tyler’s lifeless body on the floor, and the lady who had shot them both, still standing there in the living room, grinning, arms curled inward, gun in one hand. But the baby and its swaddling blanket were gone. And the more he stared, the more he realized that it was just a still frame, the scene frozen in time; a centerpiece in the midst of a bustling banquet.
“You performed wonderfully,” said the heavyset woman.
“Just like the first time,” said a man with a burly voice. “Almost to the letter.”
Duncan tried to sit up, sliding in his own congealing blood. “Who...who in the hell are you people?”
There was a big black man standing beside him now. “I think I should answer that,” he said.
That voice was familiar. Duncan craned up at the face and, as he blinked his vision clear, recognized the man as his old police lieutenant, Mo White.
“Mo?” he said. “You’re not supposed to be here yet.”
“This is intermission,” Mo said. “And in answer to your question, we’re the ones who helped bring you and the seraph back to this night.”
The taste of gunpowder was still thick in Duncan’s throat. “I’m sorry, the seraph?”
“That’s right. It’s living inside you. On the force, this is what we call field training.”
“Translate.”
Mo placed a hand on Duncan’s head, and immediately the throbbing pain decreased, his breathing returned to normal. “See, McNeil, the events of this very night are what entrusted you to the seraph, why it chose you to be what has been a long line of tutors. And in your case, a breeder, too. Being a veteran police officer, and later a homicide detective, you’re a veritable encyclopedia on the perversions of mankind. But a very special set of circumstances pervade this evening. The seraph’s especially interested in learning from your conduct, what led you to become so reviling, so merciless against your solemn pledge to perform the contrary. And, likewise, it’s fascinated by the emotions that are conversely interwoven with your actions; you know, the shame, remorse, guilt, dishonor.”
“You mean, it learns from irony.”
“Oh, it loves irony. And that you did it out of something that you thought was love, well...”
“My connection with Patricia and Kathy seems a bit coincidental, don’t you think?”
“It knew the role you would play in their lives years before you were ever on the scene. A gifted psychic tipped us off when she passed over. I shouldn’t say gifted—she was blessed. She saw this night, among others, and its connection to Patricia and Katherine Bently.”
“I was snitched out?” Duncan said. “By a ghost?”
“Amy will explain it to you in due time.”
“Well, I doubt the seraph commends my chivalry.”
“It ain’t here to judge you, m’man. It’s here to learn. It’s here to save its ass, and by consequence save everyone else’s. When Gamble first came along, he slaughtered all of its kind. They didn’t know how to fight back, didn’t have a clue. They were too pure of God. But somehow this one managed to escape and hide in the mind of man. Not in the collective mind, like Gamble, but in the individual mind. From there it started breeding, creating a population of half-breeds. Us. Given our heritage, though, we’ll never be strong enough to take on Gamble, even as a group. Only the seraph has the potential to destroy the clone devil.”
“Then why did it find it necessary to breed?”
“The seraph figured out, because of our genetic link to man, that we’d be able to travel through time. See, it has no perception of time—not the faulty ways in which man does. We have a kind of symbiotic relationship with the seraph, as far as an understanding of time goes. It learned this the very first day of kindergarten. But I don’t expect you to understand. You don’t have the dimensional capacity. So, it set about sowing its seed. We also keep a vigilant watch, making sure that Gamble never catches wind of it whereabouts.”
“So, it was stuck in idle until the first of your kind matured.”
“Yeah, it stayed hidden. First and foremost, it learned what it was to be secretive. As far as our maturity goes, we grow up very fast. Take your daughter. She may only be ten in human years, but in angel years she has an adult form, when she wishes to assume it.”
“What about Gamble? I mean, can’t he just travel through time and make things miserable for you guys?”
“No. Gamble can’t time travel. That’s where we have the edge.”
“Okay, if you’re all so clever, then why not just travel back far enough and prevent Gamble’s own creation?”
“We only have a vague idea when, and haven’t the foggiest idea where, to look. The collective mind is as vast as the universe. And we’re not as clever as you might think. We make mistakes. And the seraph’s very strict when it comes to the use of time travel. You see, the more we do it, the more degraded our ability becomes.”
“When I met Gamble, just before I was brought back, he was insistent that I not make the same mistake twice. Care to tell me why?”
“Gamble knows about our travels in time. And by now he might very well know why, but there’s not a damned thing he can do about it.”
“What about you guys? Are you able to fight back, or did you inherit the seraph’s impotence for aggression?”
“Each succeeding offspring shows a marked improvement, parallel to the seraph’s level at the time of its conception.”
“So the more recent ones are meaner than the older ones?”
“That’s right.”
Duncan managed a smile. “Then that must mean my daughter has quite the temper.”
“Being the baby of the bunch, that’s why she’s in charge. She’s one spiteful lady.”
“Where is Amy?”
“I’m afraid she’s indisposed right now. But listen, this night just isn’t about the seraph reliving one of its favorite lessons again. It’s about you learning something, too. It’s time you straighten up and take inventory, m’man. The seraph wants you to take something back with you tonight.”
“What, that I’m an asshole?”
“I can’t tell you what,” Mo said. “That’s against the rules. The seraph still can’t help but play the divinity game sometimes. You have to figure it out for yourself.”
“And if I can’t?”
“Then I have a feeling we’ll be having this conversation once again, same time, same place.”
Duncan watched a tall, thin woman remove the ski mask from Tyler’s face.
The heavyset woman was back, this time with a baby in her arms. “Step aside,” she said. “It’s time to brand the boy.”
With a great big smile, Mo said, “This is one of the other victuals that the seraph loves about this night.”
The heavyset woman placed the infant on Duncan’s vest and, gently rolling its head, swiped its mouth across the pooling blood.
It began to cry. The heavyset woman lifted the baby away, and she whispered, “Thank you.”
“The seraph’s signature is in your blood,” Mo said. “Now it’s in the baby.”
“I don’t understand.”
“It’s so the seraph can track it down later,” Mo said.
“No, I mean, what’s so important about the baby?”
“I was getting to that. Now, this boy, just given—and what will continue to be once we resume here—its extreme proximity to the discharges of its mother’s handgun, will be rendered, for all intents and purposes, deaf as a stone. Interestingly, what the seraph will discover twelve years from now is that this boy, at the age of thirteen, will be the leader of one of the nastiest juvenile gangs in Chicago.”
“And...”
“This boy will find a way to overcome his disability in such a way that not only will he heroically succeed in gaining the respect of his peers, but his ver
y nature as a hardened and riotous delinquent will prove to be quintessential in the seraph’s final stages of learning. You see, the seraph has a disability too—a learning disability. It has spent generation upon generation studying the nuances and subtleties and incongruities of wars and violence of all kind, of every conceivable atrocity committed by man against man, all the while overlooking one vital ingredient. It won’t be until it begins living vicariously within the boy, throughout the pivotal moments of his life, that it finally learns something integral, something that it was lacking, something that it can finally put behind all the aggression, put behind the fight, and that something is confidence. Without the will, the resolve, defeat is a cruel mistress.”
“The boy will teach it to have faith in itself.”
“Exactly.”
Duncan was listing to one side now, his right shoulder nearly touching the floor. “Are we through here, Mo? I’d like to get this night over with.”
“Okay, buddy,” Mo said, “tell you what I’m gonna do. As in the other times, we haven’t let you remember this part of the evening, but as a gift to you, I’m gonna let you keep this memory—only because I feel confident that you’re later gonna blossom with self-discovery. It’s vitally important to the seraph that you do. It owes you one. So don’t disappoint me. Ya dig?”
“I dig.”
There was an immediate burst of light, then…
*****
He was standing again, reaching for the door, taking up where he’d left off.
In the living room directly before him stood the woman with the baby in her arms, grinning at him as she increased the pressure on the trigger of her gun. The baby was wailing to beat the band.
Everyone else was still at the table, the portly Hispanic male standing now. “Shoot that motherfucker!” he ordered the woman.
(Get out! Duncan warned his younger self. She’s going to shoot you in the back!)
Duncan opened the door—and there stood Lieutenant Mo White. Instantly, he jumped in front of the lieutenant. Mo stumbled backward just as a bullet punched though Duncan’s vest and lower right back. He wet his pants as he fell to the lawn and began praying for God’s forgiveness, something he hadn’t done since he was a teenager, when he still believed absolution was something obtainable.
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